


Bluebeard's Wife

by ButterflyPrincess



Category: Hannibal (TV)
Genre: Internal Monologue, M/M, Thinking and Feeling, pretty much a character study of Will Graham, romanticizing, s03e12 The Number of the Beast is 666, slightly altered scene
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-04-16
Updated: 2017-04-16
Packaged: 2018-10-19 20:13:20
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,655
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10647228
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ButterflyPrincess/pseuds/ButterflyPrincess
Summary: Bedelia looks up, considers for just the tiniest of moments. “Could he daily feel a stab of hunger for you, and find nourishment at the very sight of you? Yes.”Will takes it. He's not fool enough to assume that what he asked and what Bedelia just said are the same thing.





	Bluebeard's Wife

**Author's Note:**

> One time straying away from my favourite filth that's League Of Legends RPF, I had to write something Hannibal because I binged all three seasons in three days and can't get over it, so here we are. 
> 
> Hope you enjoy~

Do you... _ ache for him? _

Will sits across from Bedelia Du Maurie in what feels like a last desperate attempt at getting a grasp of his own sanity. She's a therapist, technically, should be like one at least but when Will looks at her, scrutinizes her beautiful yet incredibly cold face, he sees basically anything but.

What he sees is a woman that just told him she would crush a hurt bird on the street. A delicate human that is disgusted by weakness, unable to deal with it, equipped with a want to delete it as a whole.

This is also the woman that had accompanied Hannibal to Florence, pretending to be his wife and came back pretending she hadn't been in control of she was doing or thinking or even _being._ So maybe he's also just pretending to be Will's therapist.

They talk about meaningless things. Not meaningless entirely, just to Will. He doesn't care about his mental state, not at this point in time. In fact, there are few things he currently cares less about.

At the moment he can only think of his wife in hospital that had almost been killed by a maniac who believes he's becoming a dragon. He can think about his step-son who now hates him because he came to know of his past, at least a part of it. And the thought he can't get rid of in any sense of the word is the way Hannibal had looked at him from behind the glass. When he guessed he had a child in his life. “I gave you a child, if you recall.” _And took it from me over and over again._

He hasn't listened to what Bedelia has to say in minutes, maybe he hasn't been listening from the very start. Maybe he's just sitting here because sitting across from something much shadier and more discomforting than the usual psychiatrist, talking about everything but the thing that actually mattered is something he is used to. It's something he knows. Something he used to do often enough. With varying outcomes.

It's when his brain drifts away from himself again, when his mind starts going to all the places it pleases without him being able to do anything about it that his mouth starts moving on its own again.

They talk about Hannibal. The topic alone makes the room feel tiny and the air heavy, making it harder to breathe. Bedelia is supposed to be dead if it all would have gone Hannibal's way. Or maybe if Will had gone Hannibal's way. She is alive because Hannibal turned himself in and for no other reason. Not her own efforts, nor anyone else's. And she knows, very well.

She says that Will is 'marked'. In a unique way. Will understands. Mostly. “Why?”, he asks anyway.

“Why do you think?” Her words float through he air, simple and soft like feathers in the wind. Will decides for the umteenth time in his life that he hates therapist. Each of them has the bad habit of asking another question instead of answering his.

"Bluebeard's wife? Secrets you're not to know yet sworn to keep?"

Bedelia looks at him, slightly down on him even. There's no sympathy in her eyes, no feelings, and her words are facts and nothing but. She does in no way intend to show any of the weakness she despises so much. "If I were to be Bluebeard's wife, I would have preferred to be the last." She spits out those, leaving no doubt as to what she means by them.

He doesn't make the conscious decision to ask this next question, the one that he's confident only two people in the world can answer with only one of them potentially being willing to do so - the one who's sitting in front of him just now.

“Is Hannibal...”, he starts, holding his breath without noticing but he also feels like he is never going to breathe in again, “...in love with me?”

It's something that had crossed his mind before. In the very early stages of... the thing that Hannibal had referred to as friendship, he had sometimes felt like Hannibal was sometimes getting close to him, closer than normal and looking at him too intensely as if he was seeing something that Will couldn't. Not at the time at least.

Bedelia breathes in shakily but there's a subtle smile on her lips. One that betrays her in the way that she might actually have waited for that question. The smile shows that she knows.

She looks up, considers for just the tiniest of moments. “Could he daily feel a stab of hunger for you, and find nourishment at the very sight of you? Yes.”

Will takes it. He's not fool enough to assume that what he asked and what Bedelia just said are the same thing. Hannibal doesn't feel _love,_ it's something Will is quite certain of. Hannibal functions no other than a child. A deranged, insane yet composed, half sadistic, half empathic child with a taste for human flesh and a whole lot of class. He functions through fascination, eagerness to learn and _entertainment._ And Will has been giving him more than enough of that during the past years.

That's why Will is still alive and why Hannibal is never quite ready to kill him, even though he has tried to do it more than just one time. Why he left his broken heart for Will in Italy. It's not actually _love._ _No,_ Will thinks, _it's stronger. More painful. More capturing._

“But do you... _ache_ for him?”

Will stares at Bedelia, slightly mortified even if not surprised. He has expected the return of the question. It's the wording that throws him off for just a second.

 _Do you_ ache _for him?_

She doesn't want to know if he feels _love_ for Hannibal because this whole, sick thing is not about a marriage proposal or a confession to be made. She's not asking if Will imagines lying in the grass next to Hannibal on a mild summer day and look for figures in the clouds. It's not even about whether he finds him sexually attractive, not even about an affair he might or might not leave his wife for. It's not that easy.

In his mind, what she is asking weighs way heavier than either of those things, it's way more specific than dreaming of being in a cliché Hollywood relationship with a serial killer. It's not that simple. It's not even the question of whether he's prone to Stockholm syndrome or not, though that might be the thing closest to reality.

 _Do you_ ache _for him?_

She wants to know if he _aches_ for Hannibal. If it's torture for him just to stay away from Hannibal, if it's pain and suffering and ache. And if this pain – like the hunger she had described for Hannibal – is also eased by their sheer contact. An exchange of words, no matter how bitter. A fight, no matter how potentially deadly. A look, no matter the thickness of the glass between them.

What she is asking is for him to think about whether he has dreams about Hannibal from which he wakes sweating and stressed out at the fact that he's not within his reach. Whether he still wants to get as close as possible to the antlered beast in his dreams. Whether he wants to _touch_ it and feels nothing but emptiness when he find out that he can't. When he finds out the same thing every night, in the ever same dream.

“Think about your wife. Think about your son. Think about Hannibal. What is the difference?”, Bedelia guides him.

_What is the difference?_

What is it? Will thinks about how he met Molly. It was in front of a small café, somewhere in the middle of nowhere in Maryland. He has never seen the café from the inside, though, he remembers with a smile. The cause of that lies in the fact that he had spotted a stray covered in dirt and skinny to the bone just down the road. And completely sane as he had always been, he had mumbled something about taking it home before even starting to move.

In horror, he had noticed that his voice wasn't the only one saying this. The blond woman next to him had said the same thing at the exact same time and honestly – it was the first time he had ever believed in a happy ending. Or in a happy part of the story that was his life. He clicked with Molly almost instantly - partly because of their shared love for homeless dogs-, they went out on dates a few times, he met Walter, the deal was pretty much settled only a few weeks in.

Apart from the first time he had met Walter, that is. He saw the giant blue eyes, the freckles on his face, the pouty full lips. _Abigail,_ was his first thought. He looked like her, just like her. Just like the child that Hannibal “gave” to him, the child he had seen die in his own hands more than just once. The one that he would've protected with his very life but ultimately failed to.

He doesn't know if this fact made it harder or easier to be with the both of them. He only knows that he loves them, he really does.

But does he _ache_ for Molly? Is he on edge just from not seeing her all the time anymore? Is his heart heavy and beating painfully inside his chest because he can't see her face or... smell her? Has she been in the back of his head whenever he wasn't around her? With a nagging feeling, demanding of attention, demanding of action?

And has he ever been fully and utterly _himself_ at any given time when he was around Molly?

He feels defeated, betrayed by his own feelings because no matter how much he wants to say _yes,_ scream it, shout it out there that yes, of course he aches for his wife to be around him, of course he loves their child purely for who he is, not who he looks like and that of course he is himself around his own wife, why the hell would he not be, he can't. He can't say yes to any of those things.

He loves them, no doubt, he cares about them deeply. The hours in which he hadn't known whether or not they would survive, the hours in which he hadn't know whether or not Molly would even wake up, had been some of the worst in his entire life, no doubt. He is not that selfish, not selfish enough not to care about his own family, no matter if they had originally just been another sad attempt at getting a hold of himself.

 _Do you ache for_ him?

Will breathes in heavily, he shutters. He remembers. When he had first met Hannibal who had instantly registered Will's avoidance of eye contact. He remembers that from this very moment on his eyes had always been glued to Hannibal's at any given time. He cannot even try to count how often he had though to himself that yes, eyes are definitely distracting.

He remembers warming up to Hannibal, becoming more friendly, closer. Being invited to fancy dinners and talking about anything and nothing, always with an almost comforting heavy atmosphere in the room.

He remembers waking up at night, sweating. Screaming sometimes. Or waking up in places he couldn't remember going. Feeling at a loss, being disconnected from the dimension of time and space. The light, the deer that haunted and still sometimes does. How he used to run away from it, being afraid of it.

He remembers feeling the knife in his abdomen, cutting deep but not nearly deeply enough to kill him. The shutter he had felt with Hannibal's hand on his neck, how delicate it had been. The embrace that had come with the knife inside him. He doesn't recall the pain, he recalls the rush of adrenaline that had gone through him and that irrational wish to apologize for betraying Hannibal like that.

In his mind, he stands in front of that heart again, twisted of a human body but presented like the art it was. He had not found it disgusting or evil or anything even slightly negative. He had _admired_ it. Admired the presentation, the thought behind it. Admired the work it must have been and admired that Hannibal had actually known that Will would be there just at that time.

What he feels for Hannibal, in contrast to what Hannibal feels for him, might actually be _love._ But deeper, more obsessive, more dependent. _More intense._

When he thinks back to when he had talked to Hannibal about killing, about the feeling it evokes, about the way he desires to present his victims, he feels like Hannibal might be the only person on the entire planet that he could actually present all of deepest and darkest thoughts to. He likes the thought of wrapping every victim up like a horrific present. The old man in Hannibal's basement was a gift, even though he hadn't killed him himself. He had freed him, curious what would happen. But the presentation was his. Made for Hannibal in case he would ever return to his home.

It's the cold, dark feeling he had pretended to pretend to feel in front of him, pretended not to have in front of his colleagues but in the end... Nothing is a lie.

And then there's this annoying little voice in the back of his head that fantasizes about would could have been if he had just run away with Hannibal when he had the chance. If the things he had said to him had always been completely genuine without the motive of catching him, without the FBI background. Which kind of life would they have led in Florence? Together with Abigail? Would Bedelia still have come with them, play wife for Hannibal, them taking the identities of the Fells? Or would they simply have been two men with a daughter, not even of significance in admittedly indifferent Europe?

He romanticizes this idea to degrees he knows aren't healthy but he had never had the greatest amounts of control over his brain anyway. The image of Hannibal introducing Will as his husband, Abigail as their daughter... It clouds his mind, makes him feel dizzy and dreamy for a second before he comes back to a reality in which this would have never been possible.

He thinks about the three years without contact to Hannibal of any sort, except from the letter in which he urged him not to cooperate with Jack Crawford again. It were the years in which he had had a family and a bunch of dogs in a little cabin in the middle of the woods. Something that had been his little teenage dream yet didn't fulfill him in the way he had hoped.

He thinks about the times that he had even then still awoken at night, sweating and in an inexplicable pain. Inexplicable when not considering the force with which he had forced Hannibal out of his mind, that is.

Will gets up from his chair, his hand working through his hair, messing it up entirely. He laughs to himself, at himself, bitterly and dryly and looks at Bedelia who has her chin resting on her wrist, scrutinizing him with the interest of a child that is beginning to understand how to read. She smiles, maybe she contemplates crushing him as she would do with the helpless bird on the sideway.

Will envisions her sitting at a table with her own limps being served and snorts quietly.

“I do”, he whispers as he leaves the room behind.


End file.
